The selection of candidates for state Supreme Court remains a backroom process.

THE STAKES:

To get more qualified, diverse candidates, the process needs to be truly democratic.

During its decades-long domination of local politics, the Albany County Democratic machine had one crystal clear rule: Don't buck the chairman.

Today's organization is a shadow of its powerful predecessor, but that rule apparently still applies, at least when it comes to judicial races. Just ask Family Court Judge Margaret "Peggy" Walsh, whose bid for a state Supreme Court vacancy was smacked down this week by Matthew Clyne, who is both chairman of the Albany County Democratic Committee and the county's Democratic elections commissioner.

Judge Walsh already has her party committee's support for re-election to Family Court, but the party leadership is backing another candidate, County Legislator Justin Corcoran, for the open Supreme Court seat. There are no direct primaries in Supreme Court races; candidates are instead chosen at a September nominating convention by elected delegates from the seven-county judicial district. Albany's delegates are expected to back the party leader's handpicked candidate, so Judge Walsh offered her own slate of delegates.

Mr. Clyne, in his role as elections commissioner, and with support of the Republican commissioner, struck down most of the Walsh delegates on the grounds that she could not run for two offices at once. Judge Walsh's attorney counters that unless and until she actually secures the Supreme Court nomination, there is no problem. If she gets the nomination, she could then bow out of the Family Court race, in which she has no opponent, leaving party leaders to select a new candidate.

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Clearly, Judge Walsh is getting a tutorial in old-fashioned party discipline. The rest of us are learning why there's such a lack of diversity on the region's state Supreme Court bench. In the judicial district that includes Albany, all 10 of the trial-level Supreme Court judges are men.

Judge Walsh isn't the only woman rejected this year. In May, Amy Joyce, a law clerk and the daughter of the late Harold Joyce, a longtime Albany County legislative leader and party chairman, also sought the Democratic committee's support, but ran into the same wall of allegiance to Mr. Clyne's pick. Once the bosses choose their man — literally, it seems — woe unto would-be challengers, as Judge Walsh and Ms. Joyce now understand.

It's not only female candidates who are pushed aside in this process. All voters are. Mr. Clyne's move effectively blocks Democratic voters from a voice in choosing their party's judicial nominee. Ironically, the whole intent of the convention process — rather than an appointment based on merit, which is used for many other judgeships — is to give voters a choice. Except in Mr. Clyne's mind, it seems.

Until Mr. Clyne and other good ole' boys abandon the backroom manipulation of these key judicial races, the glaring gender disparity on the bench is unlikely to change. And the case will grow ever stronger to reform the process altogether.